(Vatican Radio) Tens of thousands of people have marked the 21st anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust and attended the funeral of 127 newly-found victims. They gathered on the outskirts of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in an area where thousands of Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces.Listen to the report by Stefan Bos: In sweltering heat, family members hugged coffins for the last time before their loved ones were laid to rest at the memorial-cemetery complex in Srebrenica. The remains were burried next to 6,337 other victims found previously in mass graves. The youngest victim burried this year was 14, the oldest 77. Some 8,000 men and boys were killed in this region by nationalist Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic. They executed them after overrunning Srebrenica pn July 11, 1995, near the end of Bosnia’s war and dumped their bodies in pits.UN HELPLESSOutnumbered and outgunned Du...
(Vatican Radio) Tens of thousands of people have marked the 21st anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust and attended the funeral of 127 newly-found victims. They gathered on the outskirts of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in an area where thousands of Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces.
Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:
In sweltering heat, family members hugged coffins for the last time before their loved ones were laid to rest at the memorial-cemetery complex in Srebrenica.
The remains were burried next to 6,337 other victims found previously in mass graves. The youngest victim burried this year was 14, the oldest 77.
Some 8,000 men and boys were killed in this region by nationalist Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic. They executed them after overrunning Srebrenica pn July 11, 1995, near the end of Bosnia’s war and dumped their bodies in pits.
UN HELPLESS
Outnumbered and outgunned Dutch United Nations peacekeepers had watched helplessly as Muslim men and boys were separated
for execution and the women and girls were sent to Bosnian government-held territory.
Nearly 15,000 residents tried to flee through the woods, but they were hunted down and many also killed. Fatima Duric, 52, has now finally burried her husband whom she last saw when Serbs overran Srebrenica.
"I lost my husband here, and I escaped with my two children across the mountains in 1995 towards Tuzla" she said.
"After all these years, his body (her husband’s) was found. In fact, just a few bones of his body. And that is what I am burying today,” added the widow of a Srebrenica victim.
NO SERB LEADERS
Serb leaders were notably absent from the ceremony: this year victims’ families said those who denied that this was genocide were not welcome.
Many Serbs continue to deny the massacre was genocide as judged by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Last year, Serbia's prime minister Aleksandar Vucic - a former radical Serb nationalist who openly supported Serb forces in Bosnia during the war - was chased away by stone-throwing protesters from the burial ceremony mostly because he refused to acknowledge the genocide.
The UN tribunal has convicted six people for involvement in the Srebrenica genocide, including wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, sentenced this year to 40 years in prison.
Speaking at Monday's ceremony, Bosnian President Bakir Izetbegovic said in order for a crime to be put into the past, it first has to face punishment.
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